Here it is the 42nd version of the Weekly Gamefront Network News Update, the news part of the update covers the news side of the Network and the Gamefront Main site over the past week. There has been a fair bit of news from the Main site including a lot of trailers, reviews, previews and a lot more. This week there are lots of trailers, as well as reviews and more. This week brings lots of news from Battlefield 3, the latest Call of Duty as well as a lot of news from Blizzcon 2011, as well as Lots more news can be found from Gamefront News - Here

We would love to hear any suggestions that you have; if you see something that you would like to be added to the Weekly Network Update, or you have any suggestions that you think may improve the Network Update then simply drop me an email at Danny[at]filefront[dot]com (please put "Network Update" as the subject though ).

Also If you like the Network Update please feel free write a comment as I would love to hear any critism, or support (constructive though please as this is the only way that I know how good or bad the insider is and it would help me to improve this further). Also I apologise for the lack of an update last few week unfortunately I didn't have enough time to make one due to personal reasons as well as moving and all the fun that brings!.

RAR Files
I've notied that this keeps coming up on the network sites in the download comments a lot, and thought that it would be a good idea to mention this again this week, I'm sure most of you know this by now (I hope but just incase), although these also open up certain other files too! It seems that a lot of people don't know what a "RAR" or "7z" file are, these are files similar to that of a ZIP file in that they are also compressed files. To open these types of files all you need is something Like WinRar which can be found here or 7Zip which can also be found here. The latter of these two is completely free and will open most of the compressed files that you find (including RAR but won't be able to make those).

G A M E F R O N T N E W S

Gamefront News: Get Your Tribes: Ascend Beta Key From GameFront!

Old-school PC players like me speak in reverent tones about Tribes, the multiplayer shooter that defined the genre for many of us. Now, Hi-Rez Studios is bringing our memories to life with Tribes: Ascend. We knew the multiplayer shooter was going to be hitting closed beta on November 4, so we were ecstatic when Hi-Rez handed us a bunch of keys to give out to you, our loyal readers.

So, you want a key? We can hook you up, if you’re fast enough. Here’s what you need to do.

First, follow us on Twitter
Next, you need to head over to this link and retweet this message:

Once that’s done, all you need to do is sit back, and we’ll send you a Direct Message with your beta key. Once you get it, you’ll need to follow these steps to get ready for the Nov. 4 launch of the beta.

1) Download and install the “Hi-Command” game installer from this link.

2) Once you’ve downloaded and launched it, you need to create an account in the launcher, or use your existing Global Agenda account. Click on the Tribes tab, hit the Enter key, and follow the prompts.

3) Once you’ve entered your beta key, the game should start downloading.

We hope you all enjoy the Tribes: Ascend beta. Keys are limited, so if you don’t get one from us, you can head over to the Tribes: Ascend official website to register for the beta.

Not bad for a console game. Ace Combat Assault Horizon aims to provide a scarily accurate depiction of ariel combat. And it looks great. Seriously, look at that picture. But it also has some very excellent music, and this trailer aims to explain how that was created. Enjoy.

I’m not ashamed to admit I felt pretty ambivalent toward Resistance 3 before I picked it up a couple weeks ago. The first two games were merely OK, and I hadn’t seen anything to make me think this one would be different. But oh Lordy it is different, and there are two main reasons for that.

First, the player does not have regenerating health. Not a shocker, considering the first game was like that, although the second did have regeneration. That in itself was a pleasant surprise, though.

Second, this game is like Serious Sam in the number of enemies it throws at you. Any given battle will see dozens of bad guys attack you all at the same time, and it’s effing glorious. They just keep coming and keep coming.

It’s the combination of those two things that makes this game such an effective shooter. You’re never safe. Battles are as hellish and hectic as in any other shooter I’ve played in a long time. You have to think quickly and move even more quickly.

It’s hard to overstate just how much not having regenerating health affects a game as intense as this one. You are required to really be on the top of your game if you want to survive. The mistakes you make stick with you until you’re dead or you somehow overcome the odds. This game does not forgive you for screwing up.

And it’s almost beautiful how many enemies it throws at you. So often, when you consider your lack of regenerating health, it feels overwhelming, like there’s no way you can survive. But the game is so well balanced, thanks to your massive arsenal of weapons, that you always have a chance, even if it doesn’t feel that way when enemies are pouring out of that drop ship.

So here’s a rather intense look at Battlefield 3‘s single player campaign. And it’s pretty awesome, especially for confirmation that Glenn Morshower is in the game. But holy crap, ripped from the headlines or not, it looks like the plot is really getting some serendipitous real life parallells. Scary parallells, but serendipitous nonetheless.

Rocksteady’s open-world bad-guy pummeling extravaganza Batman: Arkham City might be the best-selling game so far this year, raking in 4.6 million first-week sales on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. And the PC version isn’t even out yet.

By way of comparison, Gears of War 3 (with only an Xbox 360 release) pulled down 3 million sales, and we heard a while back that L.A. Noire had shipped 4 million units — not the same as sales. It also has a PC version due out in the next month. Deus Ex: Human Revolution was responsible for about 2 million sales across all three platforms.

Meanwhile, DICE and Electronic Arts are reporting Battlefield 3 had “close to” 3 million presales for its launch today.

We’re still waiting on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the full week-one sales for Battlefield 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic. But at least for a few days, Batman gets to stand atop the mountain of unconscious and bloody contenders and reign supreme.

Yesterday my Twitter feed blew up, as it so regularly does, with accusations of misogyny aimed at an entertainment product. This time, however, it wasn’t something obvious like Fat Princess or Metroid: Other M, but a less likely product. The newest game to promote sexism among the unwashed gamer public is none other than Rocksteady Games’ Batman: Arkham City. Not even the world’s greatest detective is able to escape the trap of sexual scrutiny.

Two articles in particular have stoked the fires of this latest controversy — one from Film Crit Hulk and a followup piece by game/film columnist (and really nice guy) Moviebob. In the piece that started it all, the caps-loving Film Hulk accuses Arkham City of “blatant sexism” revolving around the treatment of Catwoman and several other female characters in the game, and argues that the writers should be “ashamed of themselves.” Interestingly, his problem isn’t centered on Catwoman’s revealing clothes or sexually provocative nature (both ripe fruits that anybody looking to make sexism accusations could easily pick) but more in the way that male characters talk about the women. Much of the issue revolves around a single world — bitch.

Bitch is a word I think we’re all familiar with. It’s been immortalized in films (“Get away from her, you bitch,” “Welcome to Prime Time, bitch.”) and it’s a commonly used curse word in entertainment thanks to its middling place in the arbitrary hierarchy of swear words.
Read: Batman: Arkham City is Sexist?Gamefront News: Blizzcon 2011: A Deeper Look at WoW’s Pokemon-Like Pet Battle System

Blizzard developers announced a whole mess of new features for Mists of Pandaria, the next expansion to World of Warcarft, at Blizzcon 2011 Friday. A big portion of the 90-minute WoW preview panel was dedicated to one specific feature: pet battles.

Now, bear with me, as I explain what pet battles is to those of you who weren’t streaming the con to your personal computers. It’s Pokemon. Almost exactly.

Players use their pets to battle other pets in a turn-based RPG-type game, in both PvE and PvP situations. Primarily, the PvE portion of the game is where you go out into the wilderness to find more pets, and battle them. To do that, you bring along a pet of your own. Win, and you capture the pet. Then the pet becomes your pet. Some pets will only appear at certain places and at certain times or under certain conditions. As Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton put it, you might have a pet that only appears in a specific zone, in the spring, when it’s raining, at night.

Pets level up as they win battles. You’ll put pets together in three-pet teams when you take them into battle, and as they level up they gain new abilities up to a total of six. You can assign three abilities to each pet from the six-ability stable, allowing you some customization for your team. You’ll want to level up multiple pets at a time so you can have them together in a battle.

There will be nine new dungeons to play in the fourth World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, and along with them, Blizzard is throwing in a whole lot of new content.

Much of what will be available in terms of dungeons and raids was detailed in one of Friday’s panels at Blizzcon 2011, aptly titled “Dungeons and Raids.” Primarily, Blizzard devs detailed how a few of those dungeons are going to play out, spoke about some aesthetic changes to how dungeons are presented in the world, and detailed a few new features for players looking for additional content beyond questing.

The panel, headed by Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton and Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer, discussed several dungeons to be found on Pandaria, the content included in the expansion. One of the big changes from many of the dungeons of WoW’s past is that Pandaria’s will be visible in the outside world in 1:1 scale — meaning you’ll approach each one from the outside and see it standing before you, then explore it. It also opens a lot of options for questing.

According to Stockton, Blizzard is putting in a lot of questing opportunities around and even inside dungeons, so each of the Pandaria dungeons is going to include quite a bit of surrounding story. That means that when you finally enter one to clear it out and destroy its bosses, you’ll have a reason why you’re killing the things you’re killing, and what the goal to clearing those dungeons out will be.

So the Diablo III beta took place in an early area on Normal difficulty, and a lot of folks complained that it was too easy. Well, duh, of course it’s easy. You, the folks in the beta, are the hardest of the hardcore, and you’re playing on Normal. The folks at Blizzard promised at the Diablo III Blizzcon panel today it won’t be anything like that on the higher difficulties, known as Nightmare, Hell and Inferno. Inferno, in particular, is intended to be extremely challenging, to the point where any encounter can kill you, although they insisted that it is possible for you to solo it.

And there’s incentive for you to take on the higher difficulties — 70% of items you won’t even be able to find on Normal. So you know you’re going to have to try this stuff out.

During a Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm mod panel, it was revealed that Blizzard DoTA has been streamlined (some might say “dumbed down”) to suit more casual players. There will be no armor stat, last hitting won’t gain you any gold or experience and there’s no recipes. All the items are stand-alone and the item list is far smaller than the original DoTA. Also, there aren’t very many situational items. This means there’s really no need to take your opponent’s character choices into account when purchasing items, just buy whatever compliments your own character.

Currently, there are only twelve heroes to choose from in Blizzad DoTA, which is pretty small compared to games like the original DoTA which has over a hundred characters. They build that the devs are playing (which is different than the build showcased to the public) has sixteen playable heroes. They also mentioned they plan to add more heroes over time, but I doubt they’ll get anywhere near the number of heroes in comparable games.

World of Warcraft’s first and as-yet only hero class is not immune from the Talent 2.0 revamp. Check out the screenshots below to get the full details on the necrotic combatant’s eighteen new options, and start planning your build!

A little later in the Mists of Pandaria expansion for World of Warcraft is when you’ll find yourself at the Shado-pan Monastery. Blizzard dumped all kinds of details on us about the upcoming dungeons and raids for the new expansion, and we’ve seen fly-throughs of both the Temple of the Jade Serpent, the expansion’s first dungeon, and Stormstout Brewery, a dungeon in which your job is to rescue beer.

Shado-pan Monastery is occupied by the Shado-pan monks, a group of pandaren warriors who task themselves with protecting the land from its curse — the Sha, creatures that are physical manifestations of negative emotions and energy created by the people. When the Alliance and Horde show up in Pandaria, and bring their war along with them, it causes the Sha to run amok. And that’s why you have to clean up the monastery. Check out the layout in the video below.

In today’s Diablo III open Q&A panel, a fan stated that “there are soem areas in Diablo II that can be frustratingly convoluted”, and wanted to know if how Diablo III would differ. Diablo’s Jay Wilson joked that “I think the question you’re asking is ‘are we not going to do crappy design’, then passed the mic to Kevin Martens, who revealed that the majority of Diablo III dungeons will be ‘very random’.

“A change from Diablo II to Diablo III,” he continued, “is that there’s quite a bit more story moments in the dungeons themselves, so in a completely random dungeon, as in one that rolls randomly out in the world, very often you’ve got a unique entry point, say the Isle of Ragnar. There’s a guy named Boltar who’s a treasure hunter, he gets into these old ruins and can’t get through on his own. So it’s an escort mission, and it concludes at the end on it’s own. There’s random dungeon in between, but there’s a set starting location and a set final room and the question concludes.”

He continued, “in other locations, like you’ll see in beta we have some levels that have very little randomness, like the Templar levels. You acquire the Templar on that level, he’s got his little story moments and an open room, but even in there we have some randomness in between the start and the final room.”

So we already know that there are some amazing (and not so amazing) new units joining the multiplayer roster in the upcoming Starcraft 2 expansion: Heart of the Swarm. But there’s also some existing units getting a major overhaul. During the Starcraft 2: HoTS Multiplayer panel, Mike Metzen went into detail on what we can expect when the new game comes out. These changes are going to make players seriously rethink their existing strategies. Let’s start with the big one.

Banelings Can Now Move While Burrowed!

This is huge. It’s an ability that has to be researched and it requires Lair, but this one is still a game changer. Terran armies are going to need to include at least one Raven now if they hope to move out across the map. The Raven just isn’t a unit that’s included in many player’s builds. Protoss should be fine since players usually build observers anyway.

Reapers Will be Able to Regenerate Health

You remember your friendly neighborhood reapers. They’re the guys that are so fond of jumping up ledges and heading straight for your mineral line. Reapers can be annoying, but if you can whittle them down to low health most players won’t risk losing them. Instead, they’ll relegate near-death reapers to controlling Xel Naga Watchtowers. Well not in HoTS they won’t! Reapers will be able to regenerate, allowing them to get back to doing what they do best: Killing your drones and probes!

Pandaren have always been a controversial part of the Warcraft universe. Ever since they appeared in Warcraft III, they have been subject to speculation and rumor. The Chinese government, for example, were said to object to their inclusion in WoW — they take pandas pretty seriously in China, and they buy a lot of WoW subscriptions to boot.

Blizzard, it seems, has the power to placate the Democratic Republic, because Pandaren are here. Introduced by Chris Metzen during his BlizzCon opening speech, they are the stars of the show in the forthcoming WoW expansion, “Mists of Pandaria.”

Pandaria is a single continent, with a central questing hub and an auction house. Flying mounts will not be allowed until players have reached the level cap. The Pandaren starting area is called the Wandering Isle — it’s located on the back of a gigantic sea turtle. Their racial abilities are as follows:

Today at Blizzcon we saw the new Starcraft II Heart of the Swarm trailer, and it’s effing awesome, and I say that as somebody who has not played Starcraft II. I might have to look into this thing. Anyway, we aren’t keeping the trailer all to ourselves; you can watch it now, too.

During today’s Blizzcon 2011 Diablo 3 Q&A, a fan asked a question that’s no doubt been on the lips of many a Blizzard customer – has Blizzard considered adding WASD controls to Diablo to reduce mouse spanning when kiting? I’m sympathetic to the thought – it is kind of standard – but much like my insistence on playing inverted comes from not being able to rejigger my mind to play standard, I cannot get my brain to consistently manage WASD without many cock-ups. Which is why the response to her question, from Blizzard’s Jay Wilson, made my un-hand/eye coordinated heart happy:

“We’ve played around with it, most with games that already used that style in an isometric view and we had two thoughts come out of that,” Wilson said. “One is that you don’t want to support two control schemes; it’s really hard to make on control scheme feel great. Having to make two that feel great makes the challenge that much bigger. [The other thought is] we found that the sort of non-analogue nature of WASD play doesn’t really work well with an isometric view. It didn’t work right, it didn’t feel good so we decided to stick completely with the mouse.”

You know what they say about not fixing something that isn’t broken. So word to this. And speaking of things that aren’t broken, about that auction…

At Blizzcon 2011, the new Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm multiplayer units were not only unveiled, they were playable. It’s out with the old and in with the new as some units get retired to make way for the new guys. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of the different unit stats and abilities so you can start scheming up new strategies. We’ve also got the details on changes to existing units here. Keep in mind, all this stuff is subject to change as Blizzard continues the development process.

Shredder

Type: Mechanical
Health: 180
Abilities: When deployed will deal 20 damage per second to anything with it’s range. If any of your units (other than shredders) are near this unit, the field will not be deployed)
Notes: The Shredder is a new unit built from the Factory that allows the terran player to control the battlefield. In its mobile form, the Shredder has no attack — but when set to stationary mode, it channels area-effect damage to both the air and ground. If a friendly unit enters the range of the Shredder, the weapon shuts off.

It’s always a little confusing playing the game demos at conventions. They often don’t offer any exposition and instead thrust the player into the story all willy-nilly. This undoubtedly leaves many unanswered questions: “Why are these people shooting at me? How did I get here? Who the hell ate my last pop tart?” Alright, that last question has nothing to do with game demos, but it was strawberry frosted and I missed breakfast.

Such was the case at Blizzcon 2011 when I ventured over to the Heart of the Swam campaign demo area. Only two missions wee available, so I fired up the first one which happened to be Char. Before we go any further I must warn you of impending spoilers, as I will briefly discuss the ending of Wings of Liberty. If you have not finished the Wings of Liberty campaign, please do that now. Alright, so Kerrigan is back on Char but Jim Raynor is nowhere to be found. Last I remember, Raynor had fought off the ravenous minions of the Zerg to transform Kerrigan back to her human self. So where the hell is he?

Further adding to the confusion is the fact that Sarah is rocking a shiny new Ghost outfit. Where did that come from? Why can’t game developers finish the first mission and then move on to the rest? Anyway, during a brief talk with her Zerg advisor, Izsha, we learn that Sarah is back on Char to retake control of the swarm. I can get on board with that. That’s one plot point they actually don’t need to explain to the player. Hey, would you like to bend this army of merciless, flesh-rending aliens to your will? Why, yes. Yes I would.

Valve may be just about ready to give us DOTA 2, but Blizzard is still doing their thing with DOTA, and today at the Blizzcon opening ceremony we got a look at some units. And we have digitized this video for your enjoyment. Watch this.

On the Developer’s stage at Blizzcon 2011 during the Arcade, Mods and DOTA panel, Blizzard’s Alex Sung unveiled details about the new Blizzard arcade, set to launch with Heart of The Swarm. The arcade is intended to be a place for Battle.net members to share and access player created games. Sung specifically mentioned player created games on WoW and how they want to offer similar support for them with HOTS.

Possibly the biggest news to come out of the presentation is that players will eventually be able to sell the games they’ve made. This won’t be an option at launch, but it will become part of the Arcade experience ‘some time’ after Heart of the Swarm is released. This makes sense, as Arcade is the official name for the StarCraft II marketplace announced last year. Fortunately for players who dont’ want to pay, free games will be available, however Sung stated that they see the ability to sell games as incentive for players to generate more original content.

The Arcade will be part of a resdesigned SCII title screen. Single player and multiplayer are now merged into a single button, “StarCraft”, and next to that is the new ‘Arcade’ button. With one click you’ll be taken to a screen where a featured game selected by Blizzard is along the top, the most popular games listed along the right, and three new lists designed to help lesser known games get discovered. They are “What’s Hot”, “New and Noteworthy” and “Up and Coming”. In addition, a 5 star rating system has been added, which helps to bring attention to games that may not have become popular yet.

Blizzard has decided to retire two Protoss air units for the upcoming Heart of the Swarm Expansion. The Carrier was a force to be reckoned with in the original Starcraft. Its swarms of interceptors were feared by Terran and Zerg players alike. However, the Carrier had fallen by the wayside in Starcraft 2. Players instead began to favor the new Void Rays, and the Carrier was rarely used in multiplayer.

The Mothership was new to Starcraft 2, but it’s beginning to resemble a failed experiment. Because players were only allowed one Mothership at a time, it was a little to close to a hero unit for most players’ liking.

Never fear, though. The Protoss will be getting new air units to replace those being retired. See them, along with other brand-new Heart of the Swarm delicacies, over at our new Starcraft 2 Units post.

Two Terran players vied for GSL supremacy Friday night as MMA took on IMMvp at Blizzcon 2011. Normally, seeing a TvT match-up in the finals has fans yelling “Terran is OP” but Friday night they were just shouting MMA’s name. The Anaheim Convention Center was packed to the gills with Starcraft fans who wanted to see this epic match-up. This is the first time a GSL finals event has been held outside of Korea and it was one for the history books.

IMMvp is the mighty Terran player who defeated IMNestea and FruitDealer in “Gisado’s Challenge” matches. He was favored to defeat MMA in the GSL finals, but IMMvp got more than he bargained for when he took on the vicious MMA. After a delay due to technical difficulties, the first game was finally underway and MMA opened up with a proxy barracks and factory. He correctly guessed that his opponent would go for a fast expand and he hit it with siege tanks before IMMvp could react. He was up one to nothing.

In the second game MMA came strong again and used Marines and Marauders to keep IMMvp’s Siege Tanks on the defensive. MMA caught a huge group of tanks before they could siege up and IMMvp never really recovered. IMMvp did manage to come back and win the third game as his tanks rolled over the heavy bio and fast expand of IMMvp.

Last night, after the Mass Effect Twitter account tweeted that there will be a Mass Effect 3 demo in January, BioWare UK Community Manager Tully Ackland tweeted that there will be ways for gamers to get the demo early.

There will be several ways to get the #ME3 demo early! Pick up a copy of #BF3 and thats one option! More ways TBA

So buy Battlefield 3, get Mass Effect 3 demo early. Got it. I wonder how that will work. I guess we’ll find out at some point.

There are lots of cool things in this world, but there are few things quite as cool as a Mass Effect assault rifle you can hold in your hands. Guess What? You can have that now. The BioWare store is doing a pre-sale on a replica M-8 Avenger for only $650. That’ a bargain for the amount of cool you’ll be allowing into your house if you get one of these.

If you’re down for this purchase, you may just want to hurry, as they’re only making 500 of these things. Now that you know that, you just have to buy it, don’t you? You NEED to be one of the few. OK OK, I’ll buy one, even though I can’t afford it. That’s what credit cards are for!

Many Blizzard fans were expecting the announcement of a release date for Diablo 3 at this year’s BlizzCon. According to a recent leak, so was Blizzard.

If you want the quick and dirty version, Diablo 3 may be released January 17, 2012.

A skeptic at heart, I take any unofficial information with a grain of salt and encourage you to do the same, but if this leak is a hoax, I applaud the creator. The image in question was derived from a blog that has allegedly been leaking info from the video game industry since 2010. In March 2011, following the reveal of some big Diablo 3 information, including word of the Auction House, a feature that wasn’t announced until months later, the website was taken down.

In August, the website resurfaced, under new management. The former webmaster, Daeity, allegedly shut down his blog not just because of cease and desist notices and other legal threats, but also because his sources “were getting close to being caught and he didn’t want to risk their families or livelihood.”

Now that we’ve established the credibility of Daeity as a source of leaks, we turn again to the image of an email allegedly sent by Daeity, which contains what appear to be two slides listing topics that will be covered at BlizzCon 2011. Everything on the list was dead-on, except for the two bullet points about the Diablo 3 release date:
Read: Diablo 3 Release Date Leaked — January 17 [Rumor]Gamefront News: EA Is Bringing Back NFL Blitz

EA has apparently done well enough with its revivals of NBA Jam that they’ve picked up another Midway sports title to bring back: NFL Blitz. This is great news for those of us who just weren’t quite satisfied by NFL Street and were sad that the last two Blitz games didn’t let us late hit the hell out of real NFL players.

This revival will be happening in January, when the new NFL Blitz will be available as a download from Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network for a mere $15. I will gladly pay that. And guess what? It’ll have co-op and online play! So you can late hit your friends all you want even if you don’t live near them. Sounds like a great deal to me.

Battlefield 3 is Electronic Arts’ biggest first-person shooter launch ever, the company is reporting, with “close to” 3 million presales running up to its launch today.

The numbers are EA’s internal estimates for presales up to Oct. 24. A few weeks ago, the company said it had received “a couple million” presales. By way of comparison, Warner Bros. just fired off a press release pegging Batman: Arkham City‘s first-week sales numbers at about 4.6 million. We’ll have to see where Battlefield clocks in at the beginning of next week, and of course, Batman doesn’t have a PC version out just yet.

What’s really going to matter, though, is how the sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 go. We haven’t heard much on the subject of presales from Activision, but I’d be willing to bet their at least 3 million, even without dedicated servers for ranked games.

Cliffy B has quite high hopes for the next generation of Xbox, and he told OXM exactly what he’s looking to get out of it.

I’m sorry, do you think graphics are good enough? No they’re not! The Xbox 360 is great, we’ve pushed it further than we ever have with Gears of War 3, but I want Avatar in real-time and beyond, I want fully realistic CG, and are we there? Absolutely not. I think there’s absolutely room for improvement.

Well, if Square Enix’s tech director is to be believed, that’s the next step for gaming with physically based rendering and whatnot. So feel free to hold you breath, Cliffy, because you might just get what you’re asking for.

GameStop UK is banking hard on future pre-owned market for Battlefield 3, because they’re offering a ridic deal: if you trade in Battlefield 3 for Modern Warfare 3 before November 18, then you get MW3 for 99p. Which is just effing crazy.

This is giving us a lot of things to think about. Will this deal encourage sales for Battlefield 3 by folks who weren’t planning on picking it up or will it simply subsidize purchases of MW3 by folks who were already going to get BF3? I don’t know the answer to that. Whatever the case, this is a great deal for consumers.

Coming December 13 is a new campaign expansion for Gears of War 3 that will really take you back. Back to the days just after Emergence Day, that is. Called RAAM’s Shadow, this DLC will cost you $15 (unless you bought the season pass, in which case it will cost you nothing) and will put you in command of Zeta squad and RAAM, which sounds awesome.

Zeta squad is made up of names you’ll recognize, like Michael Barrick (comics), Lt. Minh Young Kim (Gears 1) and Tai Kaliso (Gears 2), as well as a new lady warrior named Alicia Valera. And RAAM, of course, you know as that impossible boss from Gears 1.

Sounds cool, at least on the surface. Hopefully it’ll include some juicy story tidbits rather than just being about the action. Hopefully.

Note: In anticipation of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, our very own James Heaney completed a full video walkthrough of the original Halo on our YouTube channel. The catch: it’s at ultra speed. You’ll see.

Check out the single player preview for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary as well.

The first and most important thing to realize about Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary’s multiplayer is that it is effectively Halo: Reach. Most of the anniversary-celebrating, original-game-remastering stuff happens in the single-player campaign, covered by GameFront writer Mark Burnham in this preview.

Fire up the multiplayer in Halo Anniversary, and you’ll find the Halo: Reach engine, replete with its cluttered UI and wealth of armor abilities, powering proceedings. You’ll connect to Halo: Reach servers, fire Halo: Reach weapons and compete in Halo: Reach gametypes. This came as something of a surprise to me — already reeling from forced re-entry (after long absence) into the frenetic feeding frenzy that is Team Slayer, the tweaked controls and new mechanics felt strange. After overcoming these early jitters, however, I was able to spend some quality time with the one aspect of the game’s multiplayer that does dovetail with its retro theme: the maps, which are all new versions of franchise classics.

“High Noon,” is one of the title’s biggest selling points. Halo Anniversary developers 343 Industries, Saber Interactive, and Certain Affinity clearly labored over their remix of the seminal “Hang ‘em High” map, which so delighted legions of Halo 1 players, and its distinctive features return more or less unchanged. There’s the two towering fortresses in each corner. The trench in the center, so conducive to carnage. With higher resolutions, better textures, a round decade of technological progress to take advantage of, the developers manage to make the map seem more like a real place, without abandoning the two fields of strange, unexplained, tombstone-shaped blocks.

Note: We did not test Halo Anniversary’s Kinect functionality or 3D version for this preview.

Note: In anticipation of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, our very own James Heaney completed a full video walkthrough of the original Halo on our YouTube channel. The catch: it’s at ultra speed. You’ll see.

Check out the multiplayer preview for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary as well.

Halo: Combat Evolved was not only the first real successful first-person shooter on consoles, but for many it was a defining social gaming experience of the early 2000s. Dragging your Xbox to a buddies house, connecting via system link and playing Halo split-screen on a couch (and sniping people with the insanely over powered pistol) is undoubtedly a fond memory many gamers share.

Ten years later, the original Halo is a game that’s perfectly suited for an HD remake. It’s a classic infused with a lot of nostalgia, but it’s also agressively not-HD, and you can’t play it online. So it should be no surprise that on November 15, 343 Industries will release Halo Anniversary–a completely remastered version of the original Halo, including HD graphics, remastered sound, new collectibles, Kinect integration, Xbox Live co-op and 7 new multiplayer maps, all for $40.

It is, I think, a no-brainer business decision for Microsoft (hey Square Enix: paying attention?), and also something I think fans want. Sounds great, right? After spending an afternoon playing Halo Anniversary, I can confirm that it is pretty great. It is what it is–Halo 1 in HD with a bunch of other good stuff thrown in.

PC gamers hoping to fire up Battlefield 3 on launch night and click people in the face with guns until the wee hours of the morning (me!) appear to be, instead, reading forums looking for solutions to game-breaking crashing issues (not fun!), I’m sorry to say.

At least, this is my situation and judging from a bunch of threads on the official forums, I’m not alone. From what I can tell, there are two main problems happening:

People can’t even launch the game. Battlelog just fails to launch the single-player and/or multiplayer, for whatever reason. This is happening to me right now. I am eternally stuck trying to get online.
People can launch the game, but it’s crashing after a few minutes of gameplay. Which sounds like a driver issue, given that everyone on the forums has ridiculous beast PCs. I assume you guys have the minimum system requirements met pretty well.
Who knows, we could wake up tomorrow and this could be all fixed magically. It’s launch night, after all. This stuff happens.

PC gamers–how’s Battlefield 3 running for you? Any problems, or (better yet) solutions to any of these problems you’ve discovered? Let your brethren know in the comments.

We had heard previously that you’ll get to play Battlefield 3 at a higher res on 360 if you install it to your hard drive, but it seems it’s a little more drastic than that. It’s more like if you want to play the default version of the game, you’ll need to install it. Says Patrick Bach to GamerZines:

The thing with the 360 is that you need to be able to give consumers a game where you don’t have to install it on a hard drive, because there are 360s without a hard drive. So we need to give you the option of installing it, rather than just demanding it. You could call it a ‘standard-def’ version for the 360 if you don’t have a hard-drive.

It does make a difference, yes, absolutely.

I would say something like, “Well, I guess you should install it then,” but then I remembered that if you aren’t playing it on PC you’re a loser. And I mean that in all seriousness without a hint of irony or sarcasm.

This new trailer for Battlefield 3 asks: Is it real, or is it Battlefield 3? It’s a trick question, it turns out, because parts of it are real and parts are Battlefield 3. Nice, guys. Way to f–k with our heads here. Now watch this trailer and see the mindf–k for yourself.

This week, GameFront has teamed up with Warner Bros. to bring you three exclusive trailers for Lord of the Rings: War in the North. This is the second of those trailers.

Today we’re featuring a second exclusive trailer for Lord of the Rings: War in the North, this time featuring the Dwarf class. If you’re inclined to play a vertically challenged character, this trailer is for you.

The trailer shows off combat with Farin, the dwarf champion. It also give us a glimpse of skills upgrades, special abilities, and even the dwarf’s racial ability to see weaknesses in stone and find hidden game locations. Plus, there’s the obligatory appearance from a giant spider.

Watch the embedded version below, or download a copy for yourself by clicking the conveniently located download button! You can also check out yesterday’s exclusive trailer featuring the Human race.

Mass Effect 3 will be out on March 6, but you won’t have to wait until then to play it, because in January, BioWare will be putting out demo that will include both single- and multiplayer gameplay. To be honest, I feel like this is going to be the worst thing ever, because it’s going to make the wait for the full game that much more intense and awful. Imagine if you got to have sex, but only for five seconds — that’s what this will be like. I’ve been down that road, and IT’S NOT VERY FUN. Thanks for promising a huge tease, BioWare!

We heard back at E3 2011 that when Minecraft made its migration to consoles, it would be heading to the Xbox 360 first. But guess what? “First” has become “only.” Sucks to be you, Playstation 3 owners. And Wii fans, to a lesser extent (because seriously, who plays the Wii anymore).

Markus “Notch” Persson confirmed the exclusivity deal on his Twitter account. The game will appear on Xbox Live in Spring 2012, which means PC owners of the game will have been playing and enjoying the release for, like, five months or so. Notch mentioned a while back that the full release of the game would come at the end of MineCon, which is taking place Nov. 18 in Las Vegas.

By the by, if you’re cool enough to head to MineCon, you’ll get some fresh alpha keys for Mojang’s next two games, Scrolls and Cobalt. Lucky you!

It’s World War III and things are looking pretty dicey. Russian soldiers are invading Wall Street and Paris, among, you know, like everywhere else. There’s a whole mess of stuff going on, but it mostly boils down to shooting and exploding. Welcome to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

C’mon, you know what to expect — check out the trailer below. It’s cool-looking, that’s for sure.

It’s probably difficult to make a multiplayer trailer for a game that engages me on any significant level, but it looks like this trailer for Battlefield 3 has done the trick. It actually make multiplayer look exciting and fun. Crazy.

Back during the glory days for the N64, at the height of its popularity, Rare released Perfect Dark. Console shooters were hitting a high water mark they’d never known before, on the back of a stupendous multiplayer offering.

Among the coolest bits that made it into that game was a map in with rooms that mimicked the classic scene from The Matrix in which Trinity and Neo carry a buttload of weapons through metal detectors into a highly guarded building, then proceed to shoot up the lobby. You remember the one — with the pillars and the guards getting blown apart. PD brought us into that room and it was always a favorite among the multiplayer parties I had with my friends.

There’s just something awesome about being able to find yourself recreating a classic scene of asskicking from a film known for being bad-ass. Such is the premise behind Payday: The Heist — it’s filled with near-recreations of classic action movie moments, in which highly trained, morally ambiguous and extremely well-funded stickup men steal something huge and awesome and totally out of the realm of possibility from somebody else. Scrolling through Payday’s six large, objective-filled multiplayer maps, it’s easy to count their inspirations: Die Hard, Heat, SWAT, Ronin (maybe). And of course, what would a masked heist movie homage list be without Point Break.

Remember the PlayStation TV? You know, the one that changes splitscreen so that each person actually gets the whole screen for himself at the same time? Yeah, that s–t is still happening, and it’s happening November 13. On that day, you can spend $500 and get: a 24? 3D TV, two pairs of 3D glasses and copies of Resistance 3 and Motorstorm Apocalypse. Just a heads up.

Bitch is a word I think we’re all familiar with. It’s been immortalized in films (“Get away from her, you bitch,” “Welcome to Prime Time, bitch.”) and it’s a commonly used curse word in entertainment thanks to its middling place in the arbitrary hierarchy of swear words.

So if you wanna play Battlefield 3 on PC, you need to update to the most current version of Origin. That means you should probably go ahead and do that now so you’ll be hot and ready when the time comes to boot up the game at midnight Pacific tonight. You don’t want to miss out on even the five minutes it will take to update this thing, so just go ahead and do it.

Develop sources tell them that Microsoft is hard at work on a new console known as “Xbox Next” that will be announced at E3 2013 and released later that year — and nobody, apparently, thinks it’s going to happen before then, despite reports that say otherwise.

Too, they say that Lionhead is already working on a new Fable game for the console, and that an EA studio (Crytek?) already has preliminary hardware and is developing a game for the console as well.

God, all this new console news is getting me pumped up. For better or for worse, we live in a world in which PC standards are dictated by console standards, and so we’re not going to progress significantly from where we are now until new console hardware is released. Sorry, guys.

Without question, one of the most anticipated games of the near future is Grand Theft Auto V. People keep a watch for news of this game like hawks, even though it had not officially been announced. Whether it was resumes, casting calls or even Gilbert Gottfried, any mention of GTA V brought scrutiny from gamers everywhere. Apparently Rockstar has had enough of this, as they have officially announced Grand Theft Auto V this morning.

There’s almost no information, just this page that shows off the logo (seen above) and the date of the first trailer, Nov. 2. All you GTA fans can go ahead and mark your calendars. We’ll have the trailer for you on Nov. 2, but until then, you can get yourself ready by trying out the Superman Mod for GTA IV, or watching The Brothers Mario.

Jeez, how bad would it suck to actually live in the world of Elder Scrolls? I mean, considering that you would probably not be some kind of bad-ass adventurer, but are much more likely to wind up as a Commoner, Henchman or City Guard — and in other words, dragon fodder.

I feel like the trailer below for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim pretty accurately depicts that it wouldn’t be any fun. Everyone looks unwashed and horrifically unhappy as they flee a dragon that is literally burning down their town. One lady carries a baby and you gotta figure that baby probably has about a 30 percent chance of living to be old enough to grab a sword and get cut in half by some demon/dragon/ogre/troll/bandit/cultist.

Also, the adventurer guy who goes up against the dragon doesn’t even bring a shield. I’m guessing he’s dead. I don’t care how “Dragonborne” you are, fire still melts skin pretty effectively.

Every time I see a new cinematic trailer for an Assassin’s Creed game, I think, “Yeah, that would probably look awesome on the big screen. Sony, apparently, agrees with me, and so the rumored Assassin’s Creed movie might just be going forward.

According to Variety, Sony is in final negotiations with Ubisoft to adapt and distribute the picture. Assassin’s Creed: The Movie would be produced under Ubisoft’s own fledgling production house Ubisoft Motion Pictures.

This sounds like a grand idea to me, but Sony had better understand what it is they’re undertaking — they’d have to make a minimum of like a million films, which would get weirder as they go along and provide no answers to the strange overarching plot. Good luck with that.

Batman sure has come a long way since his on-screen debut in 1943's film serial. From those awful Adam West eyebrows to his unfortunate Lego incarnation, the Caped Crusader has evolved throughout the games and movies he’s starred in — and, occasionally, taken a step backward along the way.

Sony has just announced on the PlayStation Blog that they’ll be releasing the PlayStation Vita handheld awesome device on February 22, 2012 in Europe, the United States, Canada and Latin America. So the entire West will be getting the thing on the same day. Pretty awesome, I’d say.

February 22 is a Wednesday, which seems like an odd day, but at least it’s not a Sunday (coughnintendocough). Weekdays are good for launches, so I’m not going to complain.

Nintendo is finally joining the Hulu Plus party, as Nintendo today announced that both the Wii and the 3DS would be getting the streaming video service. They say this is “coming soon,” but they don’t give a date. For the 3DS, the addition of Hulu Plus will come as part of the big fall firmware update, which will also give the device the ability to record 3D videos. Too bad they can’t improve the camera quality with a firmware update. Sigh.

Uncharted 3 is still two weeks away, but it already has a launch trailer for some reason. I guess they were just too pumped about it to not push it out already. That’s fine, because I really needed a new trailer for this game to remind me that I’m totally excited out of my mind for it.*

The reviews are in on Uncharted 3 (except for ours, for whatever reason), and as you might have guessed there are superlatives being thrown around everywhere. Let’s take a look around the web, shall we?

IGN — 10 out of 10

From start to finish, single player to multiplayer, this game sings. The characters, the graphics, the sound, the story – they’re all top notch. If you’re willing to skip Uncharted 3, be prepared to miss one of gaming’s finest moments.

Giant Bomb — 5 stars

The only thing that might surprise you about Uncharted 3's relentless roller coaster ride is that it doesn’t advance the standards for video game action like its groundbreaking, mind-blowing, superlative-generating predecessor did. But it certainly does match them. There’s a slight sense of “been there, done that” in the way this game hews so closely to Uncharted 2's masterful blend of puzzle-solving, parkour, and dizzying action scenes.

Game Informer — 9.5 out of 10

Around the edges of Uncharted 3, there’s the vague sense that things are a bit too pat, that it’s all beginning to feel a little formulaic. You could draw comparisons to Call of Duty, another series that relies heavily on high production values and popcorn-movie bombast. However, Uncharted 3 still affects me, not only because it’s such sublime fun, but because it’s telling the tale of characters I have a real affection for.

While id tools away at Doom 4 without really talking about it much, Universal still thinks there’s money to be had in a Doom film, and so they’re looking to put one together… in 3D.

This will not be a sequel; rather, it would be a reboot, which makes sense as the first film kinda sucked. Still, if they wanna be true to the franchise, they’ll make it a reboot and call it Doom 2, because it’s not like id has ever concerned themselves with making sure that games with a number behind them have anything to do with the other games in the series.

Is this a cool idea? I can’t tell, and I’m not going to pass any judgment on this until they get a screenwriter and director, assuming they go that far with this plan. That’s the only way I’ll be able to guess if it’ll be good.

The other day we heard that Valve is working on a new in-game level editor for Portal 2 that would feature commentary by GLaDOS as you create the levels, and Valve today has confirmed part of that report. They sent out a press release announcing that an update for Portal 2 will be released in the new year that will include the editor, but it does not mention GLaDOS at all, and so I don’t know what to think about that particular aspect of the previous report.

Back when Portal 2 came out, there seemed to be some vague talk about Valve releasing modding or level-editing tools that would allow users to create their own Portal test chambers. It seemed like a no-brainer that the game should include just such a set of tools, but they don’t yet exist.

But it seems that Valve is working on those level-editing tools, according to journalist Geoff Keighley’s “The Final Hours of Portal 2? app. Designed for the iPad, the app is basically a big magazine-style report that takes readers behind the scenes of the creation of Portal 2 as it was coming down to the wire. And now it includes a bit that says Valve is working on “a Photoshop for test chambers.” Oh, and GLaDOS might be there.

‘The writers are even discussing the idea of adding a personality to the editor,’ explained Keighley. ‘[I]magine what it would be like to have GLaDOS berate you every time you spell something incorrectly in Microsoft Word and you’ll have a sense of where this can go.’

Development of UEaW V1 has been slower this last month, mainly due to my second year of medical school starting. Shimrra can't keep going on his own, and Geroenimo has other commitments so the pace has been more relaxed recently. This doesn't mean nothing has happened

The Galactic AI draws ever closer to completion.
The new GUI is almost finalised, and is looking pretty sexy imho. Forum members can view some exclusive alpha shots of the Galactic GUI that were only released to our forums, if you want to take a look (and join the community )
Balancing continues ever on...
The Executor-class Star Dreadnaught has finally been coded, courtesy of hour's of Shimrra's time.

Forums

The website and forums are now operational again (indeed have been for some weeks, though we failed to notify on Moddb of this). More than this, they've been upgraded to smf 2.0.1 and we've been re-structuring and generally improving the boards, and have been very pleased to see quite a few new users, after activity had been falling for so long.

As with the GUI shots I mentioned earlier, media reaches the forums before Moddb, and some of it is exclusive to the forums, so besides your chance to be a part of the community it is also beneficial to be a regular to them.
What is UEaW V1?

We've had a little confusion from newer members about what will

Space-only combat - this is a necessary and temporary restriction; due to the amount of content involved we can't realistically release land and space in one version, otherwise we really would be modding for evermore.
4 eras of Star Wars history - 8 factions each with their own navy. Entirely re-developed gameplay - the game has been re-made from scratch, basically. Significantly improved graphics versus vanilla. Inter-era skirmishes. Numerous era-based Galactic Conquest scenarios, with canon trade routes, re-made planets and a more diverse economy and population system. Extensive orbital building and management options - economy, infrastructure and defence. These will be retained for V2 if and when land is implemented. Research trees for every faction. Brand new streamlined glass-themed GUI designed to reduce impingement on the game area. Larger, tougher tactical combat maps. Tougher, more aggressive AI.

Hopefully that will answer some of the more obvious questions.Closing Tempter

Finally, there's so much new stuff and differences from the vanilla game in V1, we couldn't leave you without documentation. Just a sneak preview of the front cover

Until next time mentlegen (and next time may be posted by our PR rep, s-t-n),

It doesn't look like a particularly hard list to finish off, but I figure that you'd want to know them before cementing your decision to buy the game. No xbox obsessive likes to leave this unfinished, especially if you have OCD, like me. But I digress!

Comments have been removed and locked. If you cannot keep the comments directed to the actual news item instead *****ing about issues that being worked on and costing us thousands of dollars to get fixed on the free to use vast network of sites then comments will continue to be locked on all news items.
If you wish to express concerns then direct them to the forums which is designed to handle such things.
Btw as always excellent work Danny.
Goody
GameFront Network CoManager.